


A Series of Ficlets

by kaffeflote



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anxiety, EWE, Gen, Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, Hogwarts Forbidden Forest, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Luna being Luna, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Professor Neville Longbottom, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Sweet Neville Longbottom, cursed child whomst, no beta we die like men, possibly ooc im not an experienced fanfic writer, trying to not be a shitty person after a lifetime of being raised as shitty person by shitty people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-07-25 07:05:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16192565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaffeflote/pseuds/kaffeflote
Summary: Ficlet, n. a fanfiction of the length roughly 100 to 2500 words.A series of ficlets based on one-word prompts, usually on the short side. Tags added as time goes on, eventual warnings will be added in the notes to the relevant chapter. Story rating may or may not change. Inconsistent but hopefully frequent updates.(Also, please excuse any americanisms; I am not British, so either point it out or ignore it. If pointed out I’ll do my best to correct it.)





	1. viridity

**Author's Note:**

> viridity, n. naive innocence
> 
> warnings for this chapter: mentions of death

Minerva can’t stop staring, or feeling a painful burning in her chest.

As the doors of the Great Hall open and the first years walk in, looking around the room and clinging together in a mixture of fear and amazement, she can’t help but mirror their emotions. Her heartstrings pull bitterly as the last few straggle in, and one little girl in the front points at the enchanted ceiling with a smile.

They’re so small.

Of course they’re small, they’re eleven years old, just like the first years always are. She knows this, of course she does, she’s spent the last decades of her life teaching them, and until this year showing them in to the Hall.

But they stand there- here, they stand here, in the middle of the Great Hall, in the same place the dead were placed out on the floor just months ago, in the same room where the monster who had murdered countless innocents had fallen to the floor in a boneless heap, in the same school where entire corridors had been blown apart and made unnavigable, and they’re so small and unaware of where they are, of who they are. Some, she knows, know exactly where they are - too many; a single child knowing of the horrors that took place where they stand is a child too many, and yet, so shortly after the Battle, it is inevitable. Either they have lost someone, or someone they know have lost someone, or someone they know was here, here on that day when over 50 people died in a school.

Minerva stands up and clears her throat, a silence falls through the Great Hall, and as the girl in the front of the crowd of first years pulls down her hand to pay attention, she vows to never let that happen in her school again.


	2. latibule

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> latibule, n. a hiding place; a place of safety and comfort
> 
> draco malfoy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did that fun thing where i overwhelmed myself instead of taking it slow and ended up biting off way more than i could chew, but here's this finally. 
> 
> unbeta'd, liable to be edited a bit.

Thinking about the future for any length of time left him paralysed and breathing shallowly - perhaps what he deserves, after his past actions, but inconvenient nonetheless. He’s currently in the bathroom - not Myrtle’s, he doubts she’d want anything to do with him at this point. It’s a mostly abandoned one on the fourth floor, past a corridor that was destroyed last May, and has become the perfect hiding spot and refuge from curious or aggressive students. 

The room itself is mostly untouched, and there’s a nook between the sinks and the windows overlooking the grounds that fits him perfectly, curled up with his knees to his chest. His bag is lazily discarded a few feet away on the floor, and he idly hoped nothing will fall out.

In all honesty, it’s a miracle he’s back in the castle at all - just four months ago he thought he’d be locked in Azkaban for life, but here he is, walking around the very place he had a hand in trying to destroy, free to walk amongst and talk to students who were hurt by his actions, directly or indirectly. 

He’s back in the castle, but he is by no means an optimist, or blind to what will happen once the year is out. 

The future holds nothing for him, he is fully aware. The Malfoy name doesn't exist anymore- or well, it does, but not in a good way. The only way he’ll be able to get any job is by moving (running, more accurately, but he doesn’t want to call it that), or if someone takes pity on him, which he also doesn't want. 

He has nothing to reach for anymore, no dreams to move towards. After Hogwarts, in all likelihood he’ll end up back at the Manor with his mother, but then what? What will he  _ do _ ? No one will hire him, and no one, at least not in the coming decade or so, will bother or dare to take pity on him. He won’t be able to work, neither will his mother, and whatever scraps of money she’d managed to keep won’t last long. 

His watch chimes, bringing him back to the present-

He’s got Transfiguration in ten minutes, He takes a deep breath and stands up, smoothing his robes and picking up his book-bag. His future is uncertain - almost certainly doomed, the only real question is how - but he’s in Hogwarts now. Within these walls, ironically after what he’s done to it and people inside it, he’s safe here. He can breathe, at least for another year. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> draco's a shit but also just a kid and i love him?


	3. nemophilist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nemophilist, adj. a lover of the woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because i was so slow to put these out, have two at once! unbeta'd, liable to be edited a bit at some point.

The woods are quiet this early in the morning, and the everything is covered in a layer of glittering frost. 

Well, Luna supposes, it’s almost always quiet in the Forbidden Forest; the occasional bird might titter or hoot, but the centaurs stick to themselves, far away from the castle and its noisy humans, and the thestrals tend to be quiet as well and stay in the darker areas of the forest, not eager to be spotted on the snowy grounds. 

To boot, winter has spread rapidly and early this year, leaving the forest emptier and more still and silent than it usually would be, or at least how Luna remembers it.

The birds have all gone, the owls content up in the towers and the common rooms, and the rabbits and rats and mice and all the other small creatures that call the forest their home are all either curled up in their dens with their families, far away in warmer places, or succumbed to the bitter winds. 

Some might have called it eerie, or dead, and perhaps it is a bit morbid that all the life seems to have fled or hidden away. 

Luna finds she doesn’t much mind the quiet, or the cold. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gotta love that Luna
> 
>  
> 
> i cannot tell you how tempted i am to just write about the massive poly relationship of harry and ginny, with harry also dating draco and ginny also dating luna and everyone being super close and chill together. sooooo tempteddddddd


	4. coruscate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> coruscate, v. to reflect brilliantly, to sparkle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe a bit of a loose interpretation of the definition but whatever.
> 
> warning: does mention a death, but this is a post-war story so i'm not sure what you expected.

After the war, nothing is the same. 

At first, everything seems to be grey; grey and dull and empty, because sure Voldemort is dead, but so many others are too, both strangers and loved ones and her own brother-

Ginny throws herself into the dust, into helping rebuild what was broken. It helps, she thinks. 

When she’s moving rubble in the castle, or hugging near strangers who have been hurt like she has, or when she’s having to coordinate with others and make schedules work for all of them; when she’s throwing herself into work, and moving, and helping others, she doesn’t have time to drift or stagnate. If she stops the dust gets her. If she stops she turns the same empty dullness as everything else, and if she stops, she doesn’t know how she will continue. 

The moving helps keeps the dust away, or keeps it moving off of her, around her, and so after months and months and years, when she and the rest of the wizarding world has been able to recover, she’s still shining and bright, still refusing to crumble. 


	5. homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> homecoming, n. a return to one's home; arrival at home

Neville is eleven when he loses his toad on the train to Hogwarts and the bushy-haired Hermione Granger comes to his rescue, as becomes a running theme during his first years at school. He finds Trevor the toad, later at Hogwarts, but he doesn’t remember if he ever properly thanked Hermione for helping him.

Neville is twelve when the entire school assumes his classmate, Harry the-Boy-Who-Lived-and-supposedly-killed-You-Know-Who Potter, is the one petrifying and trying to murder muggleborns. He doesn’t know what to think, if he’s honest he highly doubts the heir of Slytherin is Harry, but when Harry is definitively revealed not to be the culprit he still breathes a sigh of relief.

Neville is fourteen when he asks Ginny Weasley to the Yule Ball and spends the entire evening trodding on her feet. As the Ball ends he escorts her to the Gryffindor Common Room, and she grins and tells him she had a great time, before going to bed. To this day, and for the rest of his life, he has absolutely no idea how he pulled it off. He’s never asked her about it, either - that’s not the sort of thing you ask a girl, much less the girl currently dating the Boy Who Lived.

Neville is fifteen when he properly meets Luna Lovegood, and it is the first time for both of them having proper friends. He had his dormitory, sure, but Dean and Seamus had their own thing going on, and while Ron and Harry try to include him when they remember to, he’s still distinctly outside their friendship. Luna isn’t exactly what he expects in a first friend, but he finds all her oddities strangely relieving.

Neville is sixteen when he is invited to Professor Slughorn’s “Slug Club”. He is invited exactly once, and then never again. He doesn’t think he minds that much.

Neville is seventeen when he mouths off to a Death Eater and gets tortured for it. It’s stupid, and he knows it, but he can’t just stand back and watch little kids get hurt, he can’t he can’t hecan'thecan’t _hecan’t_ -

Neville is seventeen when, not strictly speaking in this order, he kills Voldemort's snake, watches Harry Potter come back from the dead, is set on fire in front of basically everyone he’s ever known and loved, and then proceeds to pass out in the Great Hall and snore loudly. He doesn’t dream, thankfully, and when he wakes up Luna is sitting next to him like she had been there for hours, and she comments on his snoring.

Neville is nineteen when he walks in on Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy snogging. He must make a noise, because the two turn around, both looking terrified. He takes about a minute to figure out why two exceptionally powerful wizards are so scared of _him_ \- they’re Draco Malfoy and Harry- _fucking_ -Potter - but he assures them he won’t blab and leaves them to it. A couple days later he sees Malfoy and Ginny Weasley on what could only be described as a date, so he figures they sorted it out.

Neville is twenty one when he meets Hannah again, from Hogwarts. He meets her in a bookstore, where she is looking for instructions on how to care for a rare plant gifted to her, and he saves her several galleons, both for the price of the book and the tea they later talk over.

Neville is twenty four when he gets married and knocks over his goblet and spills wine all over his wife - his _wife_ \- and nobody can get through the speeches without falling into helpless giggles, not even himself or his wife. In their wedding picture, which he has on his desk at all times, he’s red enough in the face to make a Weasley proud, and Hannah is still covered in wine but smiling lovingly at him anyway.

Neville is twenty eight when he returns to Hogwarts, this time as a teacher. He stubs his toe on the step into the Greenhouse and lets out a loud swear in front of a bewildered class of third years, and can never seem to shake the instinct to call the teachers who were still there from his days in school by their titles. It takes Headmistress McGonagall - who he grudgingly calls Minerva once, just to get her off his back - to get him to at least drop the titles when talking to them.

Neville is thirty when he sits in his office, in a building he never thought he’d return to, and takes a sip of his favourite tea in a cup from his wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not entirely happy with how this turned out so i may rewrite/edit it at some point, but i also wanted to publish it sometime this month so here it is.
> 
> uh, it's background but in case it's unclear, draco/harry/ginny is a thing.


End file.
